Old Dubai first, new Dubai later, dinner unlicensed and unmatched in the middle. This is the town before and after the brochure. Dubai keeps no public liquor register, so trading here is proven the hard way: operator menus with dates in the file headers, and the 2GIS survey the Gulf actually uses, which owes nothing to OpenStreetMap.
- 1 · The Cold Open
George & Dragon
Sheikh Rashid told Lakhmichand Lulla to build a hotel, and in 1968 the Ambassador opened, eight storeys and forty rooms, the second hotel in the city. The pub is younger than it claims. A trade review from around 2003 called it fifteen years old, which puts it in the late eighties, and the Russian expat wiki, which kept the best notes on English workmen's clubs, says 1987. It closed in 2019 when the hotel was refitted, stayed shut six years, and came back in 2025 with the chairs upgraded and very little else. The pint pours again under the hotel's own roof, noon crowd Malayali and Nepali, night crowd Russian. The same building now runs a Nepali rodhi club two doors down, which tells you who actually lives in Meena Bazaar.
hotel 1968; the pub's birth is contested three ways, 1968, 1972 and 1987, and the youngest date has the best witness; reopened 2025 · evening till late; the post-reopening clock is unposted · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Grand Ambassador Hotel Dubai
- 2 · The Detour
Fibber Magee's
An Irish pub hidden behind Saeed Tower 1, pouring on Sheikh Zayed Road since 1996, before most of the towers above it had names. The count is proven by its own growth: when a second door opened at the Social Hotel in June 2024, every paper called it twenty eight years in the waiting, and the press named Ross Matthews-Smith as the owner who did it. The room itself is a buried snug under the glass, and it earns its own slogan of best kept secret by being genuinely hard to find. The lunch crowd is oil and gas. The evening crowd is oil, gas, and confession. The order is a pint of Guinness with the full Irish breakfast, served all day off a menu dated this year, with live bands and trad sessions Monday to Saturday. Doors at eight in the morning, last call at two.
est. 1996; the 2024 second door proved the count · 8am till 2am · verified Aug 2026
live bands and trad sessions, Monday to Saturday
- 3 · The Anchor
The Irish Village
A full Irish streetscape that Dubai Duty Free built beside its tennis stadium in 1996, the brainchild of Colm McLoughlin, and which became, improbably, old Dubai. Garden pints under real trees, ducks on a real lake, a stage that has seen everyone. The order is a pint of Guinness in the garden and the fish and chips, fresh cod in beer batter with mushy peas and tartar sauce, straight off this year's menu, eaten in sight of the ducks you will not be eating. It grew by seventy per cent in 2013 and cloned itself at Studio City in 2019, but the Garhoud original is the door. The 2026 World Cup ran on its big screens all summer. Eleven in the morning till one, till two on the weekend.
est. 1996 · 11am till 1am, till 2am weekends · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Last Call
Long's Bar
Down the stairs at Towers Rotana since 2000, and proud of one number: 22.5 metres of continuous bar, which the operator calls the longest in the Middle East. An institution of the old school, dim, loud, and honest about why everyone is here. The room dresses colonial, an authentic Raffles look the house is pleased with, under twenty screens of football and a DJ who takes over late. The order is a happy hour pint anywhere along the length, and the happy hour runs from noon to ten at night, which tells you the priorities of the house. Tower hotels stand on all sides, and you should choose one. Noon till two in the morning, three on the weekend.
est. 2000, 22.5 metres of it · noon till 2am, 3am weekends · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Towers Rotana Dubai
🎁 One we lost and one we did not take. Barasti was a beach shack from 1995 that outlived every velvet rope in the city, and it is gone, so this road runs four stops instead of five. The Old Vic at the Ramada Bur Dubai is gone with its hotel, which has vanished from every living record. The one we left out is the Chelsea Arms, in the Sheraton on Baniyas Road across the Creek in Deira. It opened in 1978 and it is on the record as the first English sports pub in the city, low lighting, smoking allowed. It is documented better than anything else drinking in old Dubai. It is also a five star hotel bar, which is why it sits down here rather than up there. Take the abra across and settle it yourself.